Technological innovation and inequality in health.
The effect of education on health has been increasing over the past several decades. We hypothesize that this increasing disparity is related to health-related technical progress: more-educated people are the first to take advantage of technological advances that improve health. We test this hypothesis using data on disease-specific mortality rates for 1980 and 1990, and cancer registry data for 1973-1993. We estimate education gradients in mortality using compulsory schooling as a measure of education. We then relate these gradients to two measures of health-related innovation: the number of active drug ingredients available to treat a disease, and the rate of change in mortality from that disease. We find that more-educated individuals have a greater survival advantage in those diseases for which there has been more health-related technological progress.
Glied
Sherry
S
Department of Health Policy and Management Department of Economics, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, USA.
Lleras-Muney
Adriana
A
D000368:Aged; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D005260:Female; D054624:Health Status Disparities; D054625:Healthcare Disparities; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D013677:Medical Laboratory Science; D015233:Models, Statistical; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends; D018426:SEER Program / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology